In many instances it can be necessary to control the properties of water so as to purify and improve its quality and also to produce solutions featuring specific properties, such as disinfecting properties. If water is supplied through pipelines or solutions are produced on an industrial scale, stationary facilities with high productivity may be used. However, an efficient apparatus, which could produce minor amounts of various solutions (especially outdoors), is currently unavailable.
Heretofore, portable devices for processing small amounts of water or aqueous solutions are based on placing an electrode system within a water volume. One such example of a portable device includes a casing and an electrode system that includes a cylindrical coaxial inner anode, outer cathode and a partitioning diaphragm, and current leads-in. See Russian Federation Patent RU 2,040,479. The device also has a power supply unit.
Such a device allows (i) the processing various chemical solutions in the anode and cathode chambers; (ii) altering characteristics of the anolyte and catholyte by varying parameters of the current; and (iii) outputting the processed product from either cathode or anode chambers.
Such devices suffer various disadvantages. The shortcomings of such a device include low productivity and relatively high cost of the processing, as productivity depends on the casing volume. When this volume increases, the inter-electrode distance also increases, and, as a result, energy consumption increases. It is also not possible using such a device to produce water or an aqueous solution processed, for example, first in the cathode, and then in the anode chamber. Moreover, properties of the solutions processed in the available device depend on device's technological characteristics (absolute dimensions and relative distances in the inter-electrode space). Accordingly, prior to using each individual device (for example, in medical institutions) it is necessary to carry out special research to standardize the solutions produced and the device itself.